I constantly see that the current US Supreme Court makes inconstitucional rulings like for example, allowing racial profiling.
For what little I’ve gathered due to separation of powers. The supreme court is just a designated authority. Why hasn’t there been any movement that just aims to de-legitimize the current supreme Court?
Why can’t a judge say “I denounce the Supreme courts authority for their failing to uphold the spirit of the law and now I shall follow this other courts rulings”?
Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables. Would Mr. Nedham be responsible that, if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? - John Adams
The US government is built around trying to put off dealing with the impossibility of a “democracy” swarming with slaves and incredibly rich aristocrats, so it needs unelected people whose job is to say no when people try to vote against the aristocrats. There might be liberals who don’t like the racial profiling, but that’s the price they pay to have a secretive council of lords who make it illegal for you to vote to make landlords illegal.
For what little I’ve gathered due to separation of powers. The supreme court is just a designated authority. Why hasn’t there been any movement that just aims to de-legitimize the current supreme Court?
Wait, what? Can you explain a bit more? Like what laws are you looking at, and are they less than 200 years old?
At least in practice, the Supreme Court is as strong as any other American institution. Which, to be fair, is saying less and less, but the faction with all the initiative right now is not the one against racial profiling.
Yeah, it’s just a farce now. There is no merit to their decisions. They are not passing laws, but political judgements.
Well, that would be a constitutional crisis. And its what we’re heading for.
The thing is, once a case goes to the SC, its pretty much written in stone until they themselves overturn it. The Executive branch is beholden to its rulings so what they say is how the law gets handled. So if a, say, district judge makes one ruling, and the SC overtures it, the SC has the Executive branch make sure its enforced.
There aren’t really any ways to remove SC justices in the law. Thats exactly why we on the left have been raising concern about these appointees for so long.
There aren’t really any ways to remove SC justices in the law. Thats exactly why we on the left have been raising concern about these appointees for so long.
Well, they can hypothetically be impeached, but that’s unlikely to happen with the current Congress.
They can be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for criminal misconduct as well. When you have a judge like Thomas openly accepting bribes to influence his vote from the bench, he’s in direct violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Our liberal DOJ didn’t want to touch this under Biden or Obama or Clinton, because it would have angered the press.
But this was a political decision not a legal one.
We also have 2 justices that lied under oath. They said they wouldn’t touch precedent and were asked specifically about roe v wade and said they wouldn’t vote against it but they did. The supreme court is not valid in my opinion but what are we supposed to do about it?
Impeachment doesn’t seem to function in the modern political landscape
Impeachment is unlikely with any congress. It’s just not a sufficient method of accountability.
we’re heading for.
It’s crazy to me that people are still saying we’re heading for it… Our Capitol was invaded by militaries from other states and they’re now invading Chicago. The crisis is over, the civil war has already begun.
A constitutional crisis is a specific kind of thing, which has more to do with machinations of power rather than the fallout of those machinations.
As yet there hasn’t been a strong constitutionally backed opposition to these actions, though I imagine they’re in the works, it’s probably not a “constitutional” crisis, just a more generic one.
Yeah, who could see a constitutional crisis in an authoritarian wannabe despot is using military as police with no real pushback from the courts?
Nice word salad there with no real meaning. You’re delusional if you don’t think the constitution is already in crisis.
Well, I guess when all you want is a good sound bite, you can call it whatever you want.
Bad thing happen! Panic! Panic! Don’t think, just react!
You’re underplaying neighboring states sending their militaries to blue cities. They’re doing it in the name of reducing crime, but the military isn’t allowed to take police actions for US citizens.
Well, that would be a constitutional crisis.
We’ve been using the phrase “constitutional crisis” to explain a relationship between the three branches that boils down to “The President can do what he wants” since at least Reagan.
This isn’t a crisis. This is how the country has been governed for decades (if not centuries).
There aren’t really any ways to remove SC justices in the law.
The legal resolution to a broken court is to pack it with better judges and to prosecute corrupt officials as you find them.
Liberals refuse to do this. Ffs, they can’t even be bothered to bottle up a SC nomination a month before election day.
We have an outright fascist party and a controlled opposition. Until that changes, every well-meaning progressive is just taking another swing at Lucy’s football when they primary in another batch of Do Nothing Dems.
SCOTUS can be impeached. Unclear who would run the trial if you’re impeaching Roberts though.
Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all need to be though.
Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached, and even then they weren’t removed from office. You would need to have a judge do horrific things to get removed from office.
Like make up law, take bribes and shit on the constitution in favor of a goddamn fascist think tank‽
There aren’t any real standards right now obviously. I just personally think the ethical bar for impeachment shouldn’t be in hell though.
I don’t look at it from an ethical bar, but functional. The political conditions where impeachment is likely is rare.
Big difference between what should be and what is across a broad spectrum of things right now.
The Executive branch is beholden to its rulings
Though made significantly less potent by one such ruling that makes the president immune to punishment for any crime committed as an “official act”.
Their rulings are effectively “No one but the president is able to do X, Y, Z” because the president can always just do something they know is illegal, wait months/years for the court to finally hear the case, get told to stop, and then basically just keep doing the same thing a different way until it gets challenged again, which becomes another months/years long process.
They’re part of the totally optional “checks and balances” we’ve depended on for 250 years or so. The Founders never thought the solution would become part of the problem, so there’s a limited number of options available. Impeachment is one, but the other part of the checks and balances is Congress, which has also become part of the problem.
Depending on voluntary compliance was a noble idea in the 1700s, but it should have been codified in the federal regulations.
The framers made the dangerous presumption that everyone would act in good faith even if they disagreed. I’m actually kind of surprised there weren’t more set-in-stone checks on power, given that they had just come out of a revolution where a not-insignificant proportion of the colonial population openly supported the occupying force.
Some of the founders (there were actually quite a lot of them, many with opposing views) did actually see that, and thought things should be changed every once in a while.
Unfortunately that would make it harder for power mongers to monger power. So there’s rarely been limits placed on power to any lasting degree.
The problem is the difficulty is intentional.
Part of the system of checks and balances is the Supreme Court is appointed for life so should be above the constant swing of politics or popular opinion.
In theory even today’s right wing court is ok (after four years) because they will remain regardless of what party is in power or clown is in the White House. It’ll be interesting to see what they do when politics swing back to sanity, however a non-fascist party resident won’t stretch the legal boundaries so maybe is irrelevant.
Given that positions on the court open up rarely and years apart, it generally stays relatively balanced. However this time around a combination of bad timing and political maneuvering made today’s court more partisan than ever. Violating the norm of requiring that they be competent means they no longer follow existing law or legal precepts
By definition, anything the SCOTUS rules is constitional. Typically, in the US, until a law defines or forbids something, it’s legal.
In cases like Roe v. Wade, there not a direct or clear law that says “abortion is legal.” It was a right to privacy that Roe leaned on, that a woman’s decision to get an abortion or not was covered as a privacy issue. Which is not an altogether permanent ruling over a longer time frame and a change in justices and a new case can change how the law is interpreted. The more permanent version would be a constitutional amendment that would be harder to undo, doesnt rely on the SCOTUS to interpret nuance, and is the result of a push by the American people to change a law.
Ultimately, the way to nullify a SCOTUS ruling is to make a more clear law that says “no, actually, we want this.”
No, the Constitution is constitutional. The Supreme Court does not have the authority to overturn the Constitution even if they engage in bad faith interpretations of it.
No, the SCOTUS interprets the laws for implementation. All SCOTUS can overturn is previous interpretations.
This SCOTUS has openly lied about what the constitution requires.
LOL no.
There’s a process within the law, and there’s a process where we replace the current law with something else. Within the law, we can vote for representatives who will impeach the current corrupt justices and approve new ones who are hopefully not corrupt. Let’s call that option A.
Option B is the total overthrow of the government, which is ridiculous to even consider, but it’s the alternative you’re hinting at. Denouncing the SCOTUS doesn’t change the ruling government in any way. Society is built on the idea that we all more or less agree to be ruled in exchange for fair rules and national defense. In a democracy, you have the appearance of agency, but you cannot simply withdraw consent to be ruled. The difference between democracy and fascism is that fascism explicitly defines violence as the means of control, while democracy merely implies that violence will be used to keep order. Once a democratically elected ruler decides to become fascist, there is no remedy but violence.
To wit, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
That said, I do not think we’re quite there yet. I have no doubt Trump will try to go all in to remain in power, but I don’t think he actually has enough followers to pull it off.
But that still leaves the corrupt justices on the bench. We need to focus on elections for representatives willing to impeach corrupt justices. If you think that process is too slow, consider that a violent revolution would probably take decades of bloodshed, and there’s no guarantee we don’t get some other despot as a result. Violence is not the answer to this question.
you cannot simply withdraw consent to be ruled.
y’know, the people who rule me have always said that, but recently i’m not so sure…
I love those skits with the peasants and swallows and this one.
Well that’s the trick, isn’t it? The people who rule presume consent, but what they are really expecting is compliance. Your compliance is presumed consent. You can revoke your compliance any time you like, but the rulers will respond to noncompliance with force.
One way to think of punishments for crimes is as a deterrent. Another is to think of them as prices to pay for the right to break the law. You’ll be tempted to interpret this as non-sequitur.
You can withdraw your consent to be ruled and state officials can press their claims.
Then the question is “Who wins?”
I would ask the good people of Palestine how that goes.
Not a fair comparison. Palestinians are holed up into ghettos, everything in or out controlled and overwhelming indiscriminate force being applied at any provokation real or constructed by the state or their paramilitary settlers.
Consent does not play into palestine’s situation anymore than it did with rezidents of the warsaw ghetto.
Palestinians are holed up into ghettos, everything in or out controlled and overwhelming indiscriminate force being applied at any provokation real or constructed by the state or their paramilitary settlers.
They’re farther down the rabbit hole than we are. But we’re all moving in the same direction.
It’s the kind of thing that’s worth doing regardless of the probability of success. I also don’t think much of the comparison between palestine and america.
It’s the kind of thing that’s worth doing regardless of the probability of success
I strongly disagree. What you’re proposing is either a toothless protest that gets a whole lot of people arrested, assaulted, and killed. Or a militant insurgency that gets even more people killed.
I also don’t think much of the comparison between palestine and america
yeah, well, the problem is I think that not forming some sort of effective resistance constitutes complicity. i’d rather be damned for what I do than what I didn’t do, personally.
I think that not forming some sort of effective resistance constitutes complicity
To some degree, sure. But then you might as well say the same of Ukrainians living in occupied Russian territory. “Oh, you should have just fought harder” is more a cavalier one-liner than a political perspective.
I think we’re witnessing a certain amount of survivorship bias. The folks who are “complicit” are often just the people remaining after rebellious groups were quashed or driven away.
“Oh, you should have just fought harder” is more a cavalier one-liner than a political perspective.
that’s a hard point i’ll give you that one, that’s a stumper. it’s a bit of a caricature, but it’s also a reasonable reflection of my position. i really do think people need to stand up and fight but i’ll be goddamned if I know what that even begins to look like here, let alone how to tell people to start laying down their lives for a cause.
They could but that would mean effort and sacrifice… so they won’t until it affects them directly and personally because “fuck you, got mine… why would I bother to help anyone other than myself?!”
*We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. *
Why can’t a judge say “I denounce the Supreme courts authority for their failing to uphold the spirit of the law and now I shall follow this other courts rulings”?
The constitution clearly says they can’t, so if their notion of the law is claiming to be based in the constitution such a declaration would be obviously bullshit. If their notion of the law is not based on the constitution, that’s an attempt to dissolve our government.
Within the confines of the Constitution, no.
If we realize en masse that this system is broken and there is no internal fix for it, then yes.
The problem is that separation of powers is broken as trump has been able to capture the legislative and judicial branches at least such that they will not challenge him. So checks and balances are currently out the window. You have a good point that the only check left at this point is state vs federal but it is a very dangerous situation as essentially it brings us very close to a civil war situation. The next election will be crucial to the survival of the american system. Without a massive change to allow for a reboot of the system its likely to crash.
Because the Supreme Court and it’s powers are defined in the Constitution itself, that’s not possible. They are the highest court in the country.
The modern Supreme Court has more power than was given to it by the Constitution. For example, their deciding the constitutionality of a law is not mentioned in the Constitution.
It was a big deal when the Supreme Court first did it. And they’ve been slowly giving themselves extra power making it more and more difficult to stop them.
the constitution is a piece of paper that endorses slavery. it’s not sacred. we’re not beholden to it.
I mean, if you get a page from Hobbes, you’ll note that you’re not beholden to The Constitution, but you are beholden to the People With The Big Army.
Similarly, Locke notes that governance is implicitly voluntary. It works because we choose to abide by it. But individual dissents acting erratically won’t undermine the system. You need an organized countervailing force.
You need a real organized opposition government that does have the consent of the governed. It can’t just be Sovereign Citizens spouting legal gibberish.
i dont think hobbes was all that hot shit tbh. don’t i remember his conclusion was effectively, '…and that’s why monarchy is the best form of government?" maybe some of the steps in his reasoning were flawed. for instance, the People With The Big Army changes pretty much every 4 years, or did do until relatively recently, and that peacefully. so maybe the People With The Big Army could be us, if we could only figure out how to reach into the minds of all those soldiers, and an effective message to plant. while it might seem farfetch’d, isn’t that exactly what social media is and does, just for the People-Who-Currently-Have-The-Big-Army?
i only read locke’s essay concerning, but my opinion is that individuals comprise any hypothetical organized countervailing force. what people need to join such movements- what I would like to see, perhaps I should just speak for myself- is other people taking the brave public first steps of actual resistance, and not merely voterocking and sloganeering.
i think we agree very much here.
don’t i remember his conclusion was effectively, '…and that’s why monarchy is the best form of government?"
That’s reductive and misses much of the thesis of The Elements of Law or Leviathan. Hobbes definitely extols the virtue of a strong central government, but he mentions it in contrast to the feuding princedoms common to 17th century Europe. He (not unreasonably) critiques the democratic governments of the ancient world by noting their penchant for demagoguery and civil wars along the same lines.
But the argument is around which countries can most efficiently formulate and implement national policy. This isn’t a moral critique so much as a Machiavellian practical analysis.
for instance, the People With The Big Army changes pretty much every 4 years
The President changes every 4-8 years. The bureaucracy in the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and the State Department are more static. US foreign policy hasn’t radically changed since Truman. Presidents routinely run up against professional career bureaucrats who slow roll, undermine, and neglect policies they oppose. The military itself has its own political inertia in that regard, and it isn’t something you can easily sway unless you’re ready to jettison large chunks of your experienced labor force.
if we could only figure out how to reach into the minds of all those soldiers, and an effective message to plant
Military bases are absolutely awash in AM Talk Radio, right-wing TV, and QAnon internet. It isn’t unusual to see a Douglas MacArthur or a Michael Flynn retire from the service to get involved in politics and expose how absolutely unhinged the upper ranks of the US military can get. Also, we’re apparently putting CTOs from tech companies into the officers’ corps now.
I think this is a solved problem from the right. You basically buy your way in with your trillions of dollars in media cartels and contractor kickbacks.
my opinion is that individuals comprise any hypothetical organized countervailing force
Individuals have to act in concert. They need to collaborate, coordinate their actions, and provide support to one another. It isn’t enough for a million people to wake up one morning and say “We’re not going to take it anymore” without any understanding of who their peers are or what they’re doing.
what I would like to see, perhaps I should just speak for myself- is other people taking the brave public first steps of actual resistance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat
The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.
I don’t think I can seriously disagree with any of this.
Individuals have to act in concert. They need to collaborate, coordinate their actions, and provide support to one another. It isn’t enough for a million people to wake up one morning and say “We’re not going to take it anymore” without any understanding of who their peers are or what they’re doing.
okay, fine, but i- we- need a nexus of nucleation. i’m not seeing any evidence of such.
That’s the hard work of organization building.
I can say that lots of cities and universities have their own chapters of DSA. I try to be active in my own location (although its difficult to juggle fatherhood, a job, and volunteer work). But its still a very small group without a ton of money at its disposal.
Compared to TPUSA, which is hooked up to the firehose of reactionary billionaire wallets, its an uphill climb.
my experience with the local com.par. was that they were mostly interested in re-hashing the history of russia and selling books and t-shirts… i’ll check out dsa i suppose.
The Supreme Court very much defines how our laws work and we are beholden to it.
I strongly disagree.
Well, our entire legal system says otherwise.
I agree, your opinion is very popular.
edit: especially among professional lawyers…
Sorry, it’s not an opinion, it’s legal fact established by our founding documents.
It’s irrelevant how much people “like” it.
Don’t judges issue legal opinions? Don’t legal opinions constitute what makes up legal facts (ie not facts about a case, or facts about a person, but facts about what constitutes law)? Did not opinions about what ought to be the law determine what was actually written in the constitution? Hasn’t changing public opinion provoked changes in the constitution with time?
I agree, the popular appeal of a belief is not relevant to whether that belief is well-founded.
Trump and the Supreme Court have violated the constitution
You are absolutely allowed to criticize the highest court in the land what are you are you even trying to say here?
You can criticize, but that does absolutely nothing. The citizens have no power over the Supreme Court and you can’t ignore their rulings.
